The blogg owner is a handicraft addicted woman, of the year 1967, living on the west coast of chilly Finland.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Swing-Knitting I

Just a few weeks ago I stumbled across a new knitting technique. One would think that one knew it all by now but, no I do not, and even if it feels like I every day learn something new, it seems I still have a long way to go.
I have on Ravelry seen some amazing knitting done where the rows are not straight nor complete, it is something that looks like cascades of leaves, rolling mountains, waves at sea.
I have been intrigued and mystified, I had discovered Swing-Knitting!
The origin of Swing-Knitting are some German textile artists that wanted to combine picture weaving techniques with knitting.
The term Swing-Knitting were not used from the beginning, KlugeStrickArt is another name, it seems that both names exists and are used parallel even though the Swing-knitting term has reached out from Germany.
Swing-Knitting is in short a way to use short fields of shortrows stacked on top of each other leaning to the right or to the left. By keeping track of the short-row turns you add stacks of shortrows on-top of each other up to the turning points of previous stacks. it is important that every stitch is knitted the same amount of rows vertically to get a straight knitting even when the rows are broken up and stacked horizontally. The way the shortrow turns are tracked is with adding safety pins at the turning points.
So I purchased the three first workshops into this technique and cast-on.
The first workshop resulted in a pair of arm-warmers, I made more repeats and changed the pattern some.

The second workshop were supposed to become a slouchy cap, I changed the workshops pattern from a cap to a hat. And then I changed the rows and pattern in the pauses. Of course, as a good learning piece I made my bit of mistakes in the beginning but I am now getting a grip on this part.

Next workshop is a wrap, half pocho/half scarf but neither do I care much for this type of item, nor for the way the shortrows are stacked up in this piece. I do however think that this time, I really need to follow the pattern...
Dicipline needed!